Q: I’ve noticed lately that there are several intersections where the traffic lights have a yellow border around them. What is the purpose? I see these mostly in Los Angeles County.
– Mark Ehlers, Whittier
A: They’re called reflective backplates. Caltrans began putting them up in 2019, and that agency alone had designs on outfitting 5,500 intersections throughout California with the devices.
Honk has seen them in Arizona, too, and there are more and more of them around these parts.
Seemingly, there is an increasing number of power outages, including those when a utility turns the electricity off in a swath to reduce the chance of its equipment throwing a spark during a windstorm, igniting a wildfire. And these babies make it easier to see darkened traffic signals at night, with headlight beams bouncing off of their yellow, reflective material.
Many traffic signals have batteries to back them up, but at some point that juice runs out.
Of course, when a traffic signal is out, the intersection is to be treated by drivers as a stop sign.
Federal officials say reflective backplates significantly reduce the number of collisions, and T-bones can be deadly.
These yellow-bordered signals are deployed near woodsy stretches or California chaparral, where shutdowns are more likely to prevent a wildfire.
But Honk has seen new ones in an urban stretch of Long Beach, too.
Q: I turned onto a street yesterday and ended up behind a car with a license plate that had an all-yellow background with “STUDENT DRIVER” in large, black letters. This was the only markings on the plate. Is that legal?
– Bill Howes, Seal Beach
A: Honk thought to his handsome self, “Nah, not by itself, there has to be valid plates on that car.”
But he decided he’d better check, in case there was some hidden passage in the law. He rang up Lt. Matt Gutierrez, who is in the California Highway Patrol’s headquarters in the Sacramento area.
Not only is the driver missing a valid plate, it turns out that a student-driver one shouldn’t be on the car at all.
If not an official plate, it can’t “ever be displayed on a vehicle,” the lieutenant said later in an email.
The car’s owner should have gone with a “student driver” bumper sticker and a real license plate.
HONKIN’ FACT: In Lake Worth, Florida, Kathleen Thomas got pulled over in February for having, a deputy from the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office told her, a cellphone in her right hand. The 36-year-old held up her right arm — which ends at the elbow — and good-naturedly laughed.
Thomas was still cited, but as the court date got closer, and after she obtained the cop’s bodycam video and posted it, getting millions of views, the deputy requested that the case be dismissed. (Source: CBS News.)
To ask Honk questions, reach him at honk@ocregister.com. He only answers those that are published. To see Honk online: ocregister.com/tag/honk. Twitter: @OCRegisterHonk